It’s A Whole New Ballgame

It became a whole new ballgame yesterday evening when it was announced that Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Well, that is unless Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell has his way.

With Bader Ginsburg’s passing, it brings back memories of what happened early in 2016 when conservative icon Antonin Scalia died. Then president, Bobo Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace him. Garland was viewed as more of a moderate judge, and Republicans shrieked that tradition stated that in the last year of a presidential term, it was tradition to await the outcome of the election, and whomever won the election would select the new justice. As Democrats cried foul, Garland was refused meeting after meeting at the Capitol, and never got a confirmation hearing, much less and up and down vote.

Mitch McConnell says, though, that this is different than it was in 2016. In what certainly is a political ploy, McConnell says in 2016, the Senate was controlled by a different party than the White House, and it was appropriate to wait. Today, both the Senate and the White House are controlled by the same party, so the GOP should push ahead with the nomination, and the confirmation hearing.

And if that’s the case, and Donald Trump goes ahead and nominates a replacement prior to the election, you can bet the Brett Kavanaugh hearings will be considered two lovers getting together after being apart for years…literally. This will be Armaggeddon at the highest degree.

And of course, don’t think for a minute that Joe Biden, who was Bobo’s VP when Garland was nominated, won’t have something to say about this. Forget COVID, forget BLM and Antifa, forget George Floyd and defunding the police. There is a new top campaign issue for the next six and a half weeks, and it’s the replacement of one of the most liberal justices the Supreme Court has ever seen.

If you think for a minute the Democrats are going to go quietly on this one, you don’t know much, no…you don’t know anything about politics. This is their “Spartacus moment” to quote a failed presidential candidate from last year. Democrats realize that if they don’t win the White House this time around, they will not only lose the Supreme Court for the next two or three generations, they will most likely lose several apellette levels as well. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is already dangerously close to becoming conservative! And that was the most liberal court in America for decades.

No, this is going to be a dog fight. And Joe Biden is no longer at the center of attention here. Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be. It will energize a base that up until now has been tepid at best for Biden. And of course, the Republicans will understand the importance as well. They know if they can replace RBG with a conservative, even with John Roberts floating a more moderate tone these days, it will solidly place the high court into a conservative bent.

Until the time Bader Ginsburg is replaced, there are eight justices, five of them are conservative, and only three of them are liberal. That’s if John Roberts wakes up and remembers his roots. If he doesn’t there will be a lot of 4-4 decisions, meaning the lower court ruling that brought the issue to the Supreme Court will stand.

It also means one other thing. If the election is tied up like 20 years ago, when the Supreme Court stepped in, it will most definitely be decided by a conservative majority. And any lawsuits coming out of the mail-in ballot issues that make it to the high court would probably follow suit.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!